2. Prescription For Love

Following the signs to the visitors’ lot, she drove around the front oval and parked. The lot was mostly empty at seven in the morning. She pulled on the navy blazer she’d stowed in the passenger seat, grabbed her briefcase, and walked the short distance to the main entrance. The expansive lobby with its high-domed ceiling, dark walnut paneling, and rows of oil paintings of solemn-faced men looked as if it hadn’t changed in two hundred years. It probably hadn’t.

No one manned the reception desk at the moment, but a discreet sign saying ER pointed to a doorway set into an alcove. She walked through and was immediately ensconced in the familiar sights and sounds of a busy hospital. The hallway was lit with overhead fluorescents and the walls were painted the familiar institutional beige, although surprisingly adorned with carved wainscoting and, here and there, an honest-to-God oil painting. The speckled gray-tiled floors were worn in two parallel rows from decades of stretchers and wheelchairs traveling down them.

She nodded to transport attendants pushing patients in wheelchairs and gurneys toward the service elevators on their way to the operating room or patient floors or radiology. She followed the noise, the conversation level rising as she approached the ER waiting room where a few patients waited in the rows of plastic chairs, the sight the same the world over. Entering the ER proper through the double doors announcing Hospital Personnel Only in big red letters, she approached the nurses’ station just inside. A dark-haired woman about her age in navy blue scrubs sat at the counter organizing charts. She looked up and smiled. Her name tag read Susan O’Connell, RN.

“Can I help you?” Susan said in a welcoming tone.

“Yes,” Abby said, extending her hand over the counter. “I’m Dr. Remy.”

“New hire?”

Abby half laughed. “Yes, I’m—”

A red phone on the counter rang and Susan said, “Hold on,” and picked it up. She stood quickly. “I’m sorry, got an ambulance coming into the bay right now. If you want to get started, we could probably use a hand. The PA on duty just headed up to the ICU to see someone with ARDS.”

“Of course.” Abby slid her briefcase over the top of the counter onto a shelf and tossed her blazer after it. “What is it?”

“Tractor versus motorcycle. One patient—the motorcyclist.” Susan dialed the phone and spoke as she waited. “Head trauma, probable internal injuries

Mary Kate, it’s Susan. We’ve got incoming.” A second later the overhead blared.

Code Blue, STAT, ER. Code Blue, STAT, ER.

Abby frowned. “No trauma alert?”

“No trauma team.” Susan came out from behind the counter and motioned to Abby. “Follow me,

Doc.”

No trauma team. Welcome to small-town medicine, USA. Abby hurried after her, passing cubicles along both sides of the hall, most standing open, a few with the curtains pulled closed, presumably with patients inside. Susan pointed to a metal rack next to two swinging double doors, and Abby paused to pull on booties, a green cover gown, and a paper cap. Beyond the doors, the trauma bay was twice the size of the cubicles they’d passed, with a treatment table akin to an OR table occupying the center. Equipment cabinets filled two walls, and a long counter for charting and paperwork filled a third. The shelves were piled high with stacks of IV bags, dressings, cutdown trays, and the usual paraphernalia of a mini operating room. A red crash cart with drawers resembling a carpenter’s tool chest, only this one filled with drugs, stood ready. At least this looked like they might be equipped to handle an emergency.

Susan quickly spread a clean sheet over the thick gel mattress pad on the table and checked that the adjustable foot-and headrests were locked. Abby spied a wall switch and flicked on the big round light hanging down from the ceiling on a flexible arm.

“Respiratory?” Abby checked the drawers on the crash cart to familiarize herself with the equipment. All neat and orderly and well-stocked. She pulled out a laryngoscope and several sizes of breathing tubes.

“They’ll respond to the code,” Susan said, briskly and efficiently checking the IV bags that hung ready from the poles on either side of the bed. Normal saline and Ringers lactate, already attached to sterile tubing.

“Right.” Abby hadn’t been in the position of not knowing the routine since she’d been a first-year resident. She was used to being in charge. When Presley had called to say she needed someone to take over and expand their emergency services department, she’d jumped at the job. She’d had offers to stay in the city, but many of the other parents advised that Blake would do best if he could start fresh. She’d hoped to have a little more time to settle in, but here she was. “Surgery?”

“I saw Flann’s car in the lot. She’ll be here.”